J. Michael Straczynski

Ernie Schmidt

It's Eternia Day, and Evil-Lyn brings Skeletor a gift-wrapped plot to steal King Randor's Scepter of Power (you know, that incredibly important symbol of his office that we haven't heard about till now). But wait! They'd better make sure the dreaded magician Orko can't stop them! Naturally that means stealing away Orko's magic, prompting the Trollan to go on a quest with his friend He-Man to find a magic-restoring waterfall.

King Randor, Prince Adam (He-Man), Orko, Man-at-Arms, Queen Marlena

Evil-Lyn, Skeletor, Kobra Khan (disguised Khan), Trap Jaw, Beast Man

palace crier (?), Eternian citizens, tentacled beasts, birds, magic door, the Gatekeeper, winged beasts, Eternian guards, yellow-eyed monster

Attak Trak

In the sunny city of Eternos, where democratic authoritarianism has its home, a crier stands at the terrace of a tall building to announce to the people that the great King Randor is preparing to open the doors of his throne room to the common rabble, so they can make requests and criticisms. Sort of a medieval AMA, if you will. In the crowd is a familiar female figure (standing next to another blonde female who some of us may recognize), who is definitely Evil-Lyn. We can confirm this because a few moments later we see an uncloaked Evil-Lyn return to Snake Mountain to inform Skeletor that it's Eternia Day. On this special day when Randor actually listens to his people, he'll also be holding his very important Scepter of Power, ripe for the plucking. Yes! Skeletor realizes; he can steal the scepter! ... But how? Well, Lyn has an idea for that, as well: she can disguise one of Old Bonehead's minions to look like a regular Eternian, and they can sneak in to do the deed. Skeletor is on board, but he needs to pick the right lackey for the job: someone... expendable. Beast Man, standing nearby to overhear this, suddenly realizes that he has a tummy ache today, and will not be able to participate. Trap Jaw, standing next to him, decides that he is also on the sick list. Kobra Khan, however, dubs the other two cowards and steps forward as volunteer. The plan is set! But there is one incredibly talented, brave, and magic-wielding Heroic Warrior who could see through these evil plans: Orko! Skeletor and Evil-Lyn decide that the only way their scheme to take over Eternia can work is if they can put paid to the little Trollan.

Back in Eternos, Randor is showing his son the Scepter of Power and stressing how very important the day is, and how critical it is that his unreliable offspring be present to support the hollow farce that Eternia is actually ruled by its people (am I being too cynical? Maybe I am, sorry!). Adam promises he'll be there, then wanders off to collect another important participant: the court magician. Orko, we find, is off in the woods trying out a bad magic trick on an audience of birds. Having managed to steal the egg from one of the birds' nests rather than conjure an acorn as he'd intended, Orko wraps the show. He hears Adam calling him and is making his way back to the palace when he's waylaid by Skeletor and Evil-Lyn. The Trollan makes a run for it, but not fast enough to escape the pair's magic rays. Safe in the palace courtyard afterward, Orko tells Adam what happened and remarks that he feels funny - like he's missing something. Sure enough, his attempt to cast a simple spell produces nothing - not even a bucket of water over Duncan's head. Orko's magic has been stolen!

The prince brings his bereft friend to Man-at-Arms for a medical scan, but Duncan's technology is ill-equipped to solve problems of a magical nature. Orko remembers the tale of a magic-restoring waterfall, the entrance to which lies somewhere under Eternia, and decides it's his only hope. A sympathetic Prince Adam (who also cleverly infers that Skeletor must be up to something) agrees to accompany him - as He-Man - and the pair hop into the Attak Trak. Following Orko's coordinates, Trak carries the heroes to an overgrown glade, where He-Man gets to exercise his muscles clearing some fallen debris. He uncovers a stone doorway, but neither of the pair can get inside - He-Man's attempts to force the door open unexpectedly end with him being bodily flung into some rocks. Orko reads out the magical inscription over the door, which asks for a magical password to be said. The Trollan, scoffing, wonders if he should just say "please." The door - which, it turns out, can talk - agrees that that is indeed the magic word, and opens up. Orko thanks the door and passes through, but He-Man is barred from entering on account of his rudeness in trying to break in. The blonde oaf decides to circumvent the door's strictures by transforming back into Prince Adam. Back in his pinker form and back with his friend inside the Attak Trak, they drive through the doors.

The cave within proves to have its own obstacles. First the Trak stops short - through the agency of a tentacled beast, which grabs hold of Prince Adam when he exits the vehicle to investigate. He-Man could easily solve this problem, but Adam has dropped his power sword just out of reach. It takes the prince and the magicless Trollan holding hands and tugging to finally release the sword from where it's stuck in the ground, and a freshly transformed He-Man winds the tentacles into a ball and tosses it away. Next, the heroes encounter a downed bridge across a gorge, and He-Man (who can't float over gorges like some of us) must use his grappling hook and rope to grab the end of the bridge and tug it taut while Attak Trak drives across; then he has to outrun gravity to make it to the other side before the bridge drops again.

Free of their several hang-ups, the heroes finally reach a glowing window or portal, where the giant face of a mystical Gatekeeper greets them and asks their business. The wizened and bearded old man attempts to take the applicants to the Magic Falls, but the falls are in a different dimension and he can't remember which one. They spend some time skipping through dimensions, first arriving in a land full of winged, pterodactyl-like critters, then in an icy wasteland, then an impenetrably dark one inhabited by a pair of monstrous yellow eyes. Sensing his companions' lack of confidence, the Gatekeeper convinces them to give him one more chance, finally pronouncing a spell that zaps them to the right place. It's a lush and lovely jungle grove, where a sparkling waterfall plunges into a pristine pool. He-Man thanks the Gatekeeper for getting them to the right place in the end. Orko, too distracted for such niceties, dunks himself under the falls and instantly feels the effects of the magical waters. He's back, baby! Riding a supercharged surge of magic juice, Orko teleports himself, He-Man, and the Attak Trak back to Eternia.

And none too soon! While they've been gone, the villains have been busily enacting their scheme. Lyn transformed Khan into a regular-looking guy with a lissssp, and the disguised Khan butted his way to the front of the line of peasants, armed with a sleeping pellet to knock everyone out when the right moment comes. A very disappointed King Randor, who hasn't been able to find his delinquent son anywhere, finally decides to start the ceremony without him. Khan has approached the throne and is just about to start causing a ruckus when the royal heir and the court magician barge in and make their apologies. Orko - just as Evil-Lyn predicted - immediately smells something fishy, and unmasks the camouflaged Khan. Even though he's been found out, the villain makes a try for the scepter, beginning to spray out a cloud of his homemade sleeping gas. Still riding a high of extra magic, Orko immediately zaps the villain away. Afterwards, a grateful Adam asks the Trollan just where he sent Skeletor's snaky minion.

End with a Joke: Orko, it happens, has sent Kobra Khan to visit the Gatekeeper in his cave. When Khan demands of the Gatekeeper that he be taken "out of here," the Gatekeeper obliges by banishing Khan to the scary night dimension with its giant, yellow-eyed monster. The keeper happily remarks that sometimes his job can be fun.

• Skeletor (commenting on Evil-Lyn's plan): Eh, it's risky. We'll need someone expendable - someone we can do without, in case he's captured. / Beast Man (chattering): Uh, not me, not me! I, uh, uh, I'm not feeling very well today.
• Evil-Lyn: There's just one danger, Skeletor: Orko.
• Orko: Now that we're inside, it's clear sailing to the Magic Falls. / Attak Trak: Every time you say that, Orko, something goes wrong. / Orko: Not every time. (Trak crashes, knocking Orko out of his seat) / Attak Trak: Every time.
• King Randor: If Adam wishes the people of Eternia to know that he has better things to do than listen to them, then let it be on his own head.

• Skeletor leans in close to the viewer: Getting excited about the Scepter of Power
• He-Man picks up and throws a rock: A couple of times, to clear debris in front of the secret entrance
• He-Man rolls along the ground: Landing from a leap after outrunning a collapsing bridge

Two partial (missing Cringer/Battle Cat sequence)

Brought to you by Man-at-Arms and Orko
Desperately scouring today's episode for a possible moral lesson that could be gleaned, Man-at-Arms refers us to one tiny scene in which Orko and Adam had to work together and join hands to retrieve a stuck power sword. That's a... stretch, Duncan. Orko appears and chimes in: "Cooperation: it's almost as good as magic." While he's saying this, he's juggling eggs, and inevitably one of them ends up landing on Duncan's face - prompting our man-at-arms to remark that sometimes, cooperation is better than magic.

Evil-Lyn power punches the glass ceiling: Even though Skeletor is not on vacation in this episode and Lyn seems to be willing to work with him, she is the one who brings him the news of Eternia Day and the plan for how to capitalize on it is entirely hers. Brava!
Orko-specific lore: I wouldn't have thought we would tag this episode with this category, but I find myself forced into it by the very quick little comment Orko makes at the end of the episode about the Magic Falls being the place where the first Trollan got his magic.

• In this story, for the first time in 120 episodes, we see evidence of Randor stooping down to actually do some in-the-weeds administration of his kingdom. Sure, we've seen him take complaints about Tinglers and starving bear people (MU120, MU116), send out diplomatic missions to neighboring kingdoms (MU086, MU105), and officiate at the openings of dams or power generators (MU074, MU107), but we've never seen him open his throne room to simple peasants for their pathetic little requests, as he does here.
• The announcing of Randor's "open house," as it were, is done by a character I've hesitantly identified as the "palace crier," who stands at a high balcony and announces to everyone who happens to be standing within the sound of his voice that the court is going to be opened at a specific time.
• Incidentally, the idea that a king would take the time to listen to requests of his regular citizens is a longstanding trope of medieval fiction and fantasy, which probably has little basis in fact. I did some googling to see if there was a term or name for it, and basically discovered in doing so that it doesn't really have a name because it doesn't really exist. Kings had a "small curia," contrasting the greater council (which would evolve into England's Parliament) and consisting of a limited collection of barons and advisors that would follow the king around while he was processing about his kingdom. As a group, the king and council would sometimes hear suitors, but I doubt they would allow farmers in there - more likely they would hear landowners or clergymen. (Full disclosure: I'm basing this information on a Wikipedia article and a reddit post, but both seemed learned and well documented.)
• We see two hooded females listening to the palace crier in the city's square. One is obviously Evil-Lyn. The other looks exactly like Princess Adora (AKA She-Ra)!
• We find Skeletor busy "feeding [his] pets," specifically in the form of some kind of tentacled beast. The tentacles sadly do not match those of the dreaded "Octo-Beast" of MU015. You'd think if anyone was in charge of feeding the pets, it would be Beast Man (who, as we learned in MU105, is the proud owner/operator of a "micro zoo"), but no such luck. We learned that Skeletor had a menagerie in MU068, when he plucked the mallabeast out of it to transform into Byte. (By the way, I spent several years writing and illustrating a full-color children's story based on the idea that Beast Man would feed all the monsters in Snake Mountain. It's called The Animals of Farmer Beast Man, and if you email me and send me the price of the printing cost, I can send you a copy. I will stress that I make no profit off of this, since if I did, I'm sure Mattel would have me ritually immolated.)
• Evil-Lyn identifies Randor's open house day as "Eternia Day," which has actually been mentioned on the show before - not surprisingly, in a script also written by this episode's writer, J. Michael Straczynski. Eternia Day was among a list of Eternian holidays that Prince Adam rattled off at the end of MU093's "Trouble's Middle Name," while he was in the process of cleverly tricking the Prankster.
• For the first time in 120 episodes, we discover that Randor owns a "Scepter of Power," the symbol of his office and an implement that will apparently give its wielder, regardless of who they are and how skull-like their face, some kingly cred. The scepter doesn't look much like the accessory provided with the king's eventual action figure (for some reason not released until the desperate phase in Mattel's MOTU release waves, 1987), which was basically a spear.
• It's also worth noting that Lyn specifically says she can disguise one of Skeletor's minions to look like "a citizen of Eternos." The show uses the name "Eternos" so rarely that I feel it necessary to call it out when they do.
• In the background of one of the Snake Mountain scenes, we catch a glimpse of a small-scale stone statue of Skeletor, looking impressive with his arms crossed over his chest. I at first thought this could be the truly monumental one that Evil-Lyn and Webstor were made to work on at the end of another Straczynski tale, MU094's "Journey to Stone City;" but on further research it seems to be the one Evil-Lyn tied up with magical ropes to show her spite for her boss, way back at the beginning of MU022's "Song of Celice." A blast from the past!
• Brandishing the scepter which will be this episode's MacGuffin, Randor tells his son that it was "handed down ... from my grandfather, to my father, to me." His grandfather is as far back as he goes with the royal line, which is intriguing. Did Randor's line only begin then, with the conclusion of some kind of coup or civil war, or was that just when they first came up with the idea of a scepter?
• To examine Orko, we see Man-at-Arms making use of a sort of X-ray machine, which only seems to succeed in displaying Orko's silhouette. Not very useful! Maybe if Orko had magic the visuals would be different.
• Some of us may remember that this is not the first time Orko has lost his magic: he accidentally blew it out of himself and into a "gronk" at the beginning of the appropriately titled "Orko's Missing Magic" (MU046). In that episode, the idea of going to this magic waterfall never occurred to him - possibly because the Trollan quickly discovered where his magic had gone, and so didn't need to resort to a hearsay waterfall.
• By the way, Orko prefaces his waterfall story with the phrase, "According to legend," making this story another in the MOTU sub-category of "only a legend."
• The opening of the ancient door using the "magic word," please, is highly reminiscent of the password for the secret door leading to the Mines of Moria in Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring. Where my Tolkien nerds at? Y'all know that the message on the door said "Speak friend and enter," which turned out to mean (spoiler alert) that all the Fellowship had to say was the elven word for "friend" (mellon) to enter.
• We are denied a potential opportunity to see He-Man transform back into Adam. Our hero comes up with the idea of switching back to his princely form to get through the door, but the switch is hidden in a cut and a power sword scene transition. I thought He-Man might walk behind a rock, as he did in MU105's "No Job Too Small," or even go through the whole process on-screen as occurred in MU110's "The Problem with Power."
• It's been quite a while since I've raised my pet theory that He-Man is an entirely different persona to Adam. Adam's success in crossing the magic threshold seems to support this theory - the door doesn't recognize the prince as the same rude blonde who tried to smash him down earlier.
• I've credited "tentacled beasts," plural, in this episode's list of characters, since the one that grabs Adam in the magic cave looks identical to the one Skeletor was "feeding" in Snake Mountain. It's highly unlikely that they're the same creature, unless Skeletor's menagerie has a back door that he doesn't know about. You'd think the tentacles would be attached to something, like a body; but when He-Man winds the thing into a ball using his old spinning trick, it looks to be all tentacle.
• Duncan and Randor almost re-enact their touching balcony scene from the opening of MU007's "The Curse of the Spellstone," this time without the shoulder touch.
• I haven't included them in my library of loops, but the animation of He-Man swinging the grappling hook rope and towing the rope in hand over hand have been used multiple times before. One notable occasion when He-Man had to pull a rope like this was in the beginning of MU056's "Quest for the Sword."
• The character design of the Magic Falls' "Gatekeeper" is an old familiar one: he's Zagraz from MU001's "The Cosmic Comet"! His hair coloring is slightly different, and his voice, but he still stammers, is still several hundred years old, and still has his hippie-ish sweatband around his head.
• Speaking of MU007, the old man that Kobra Khan intimidates so he can jump the line of peasants looks very much like the whiny old man who remembered the Creeping Horak in that older episode.
• The yellow-eyed monster in one of the darker dimensions to which the Gatekeeper brings our heroes (and where he eventually sends Kobra Khan) reminds me of a pair of spooky eyes in the opening animation for one of the many classic series of Scooby-Doo.
• When he finally reaches them, Orko reveals that the Magic Falls are "where the very first Trollan got his magic." ...Oh. They are? Presumably this first Trollan reached the falls using a different route than some cave in Eternia, unless Trollans knew how to get to Eternia in their ancient history.
• The restoration of Orko's power leaves him temporarily super-charged, giving him the ability to reliably and easily perform several fairly impressive tricks - including teleporting himself, He-Man, and Attak Trak back to Eternia from the Magic Falls' dimension, reveal Khan's glamour, and teleport the villain to the magic cave of the Gatekeeper. After this last bit, however, the extra power fades out. Ironically, it seems unlikely that Orko would have been as effective a deterrent if he had just had his normal powers, so in a way the villains facilitated their own failure here!
• Blatantly missing from this episode are Teela (you'd think she'd at least be standing in the throne room for the Eternia Day ceremony, if only for the pleasure of rubbing Adam's late arrival in his face) and Cringer.
• We are still rocking the variant ending credits with the flat-painted Jawbridge.

• Again with this episode opening, we see some uncertainty with the true scale of Eternia. We've had confusions before as to how much of the planet Randor actually rules, and some vagueness on just what being an "Eternian" means - are you a citizen of the planet Eternia, or just the capital city of Eternos? This episode seems to lean more towards a very parochial view, with it apparently sufficing to have a guy yell from a balcony to summon all the citizens who matter to the king's court. What about the rest of the planet, bro? I suppose if we'd like to logic our way out of this a little, we can imagine the palace crier's duties as more traditional and ceremonial, and tell ourselves that Randor already arranged a mass email and viral marketing campaign to address the rest of the planet, a couple of weeks out from the date.
• Continuity/animation error: In the first quick shot of the interior of Snake Mountain, the camera is pointing at Skeletor's throne/meeting room, which should include the usual conference table and desktop dome - but it doesn't! For some reason, the furniture has been removed, leaving an empty space with just the stone alcoves and bony throne. It's very obvious if you pause your DVD on this shot that the usual table has been painted out of the scene, as its shadow is still visible in the foreground! When Skeletor appears and heads over to his throne, the table magically reappears.
• Evil-Lyn's comment that the only chink in her otherwise ironclad plan is none other than Orko drew a loud laugh out of me. You'd think this kind of comment would be coming from one of the Heroic Warriors, not the bad guys! Of course, in the end her warning proves amazingly wise, since Orko's reappearance in the final minutes does indeed foil the scheme.
• The scene where Lyn and Skeletor ambush Orko and take away his magic is strange. First of all, the entire plot at this point seems to have gone down a side road: when have the villains ever preemptively tried to stymie one of the heroes to make their plan run smoothly? It feels oddly forward-thinking of our lord of destruction. Secondly, Skeletor's dialogue here feels chopped to bits. "He can't see through our magic," says the villain, and then a second or two later: "- If we take away his magic." Put the two statements together and I suppose you have a logical idea: it's what he and Lyn were discussing before. But the way the lines have been chopped apart and delivered makes them seem confusing: the first half out of context could be interpreted as Skeletor talking about the magical bolt he's firing at that moment.
• It does seem odd, in this de-magicked situation, that the heroes don't try doing the thing they thought to do first in MU046: go to the Sorceress. If all Orko has to go on is some vague story about a waterfall, why not head to Grayskull to get some particulars? Surely if anyone has the skinny on this thing, it's our favorite mystical bird lady. In the event, though, we find that Orko is able to give "coordinates" to Attak Trak, suggesting that he wasn't as uncertain about the location of this "legend" as it initially seemed.
• The magic door voice makes a big fuss over not allowing He-Man inside, but apparently has no objection to letting Adam and Orko plow through the cave in their giant Attak Trak. Um, did the van ask nicely if it could come in?
• Trak's scale seems off in the scene where Adam steps out the back door. He's awfully small in comparison to the vehicle. Typically we see the front cockpit comfortably seating two characters abreast, making it about the width of a typical Earth minivan; but when Adam gets grabbed by the tentacles, he appears to be posed in an echoing vault of a vehicle which could easily fit four or five people standing in a row.
• A few seconds later, when Orko exits out the back of the Trak, we encounter another animation error, as the Trollan clearly floats behind a tentacle which he should be in front of.
• You have to wonder whether the magic door feels at least a little betrayed when Adam changes to He-Man inside the cave. That's the guy you didn't want to let in! Seems like cheating to me. Honestly I almost felt like the whole device of not letting He-Man in, and then presenting He-Man and Orko with a collapsed bridge that the non-floating member of the party couldn't use, were meant to make it so Orko had to finish this journey on his own - you know, to earn back his own magic under his own power. Instead, we eventually find that the story is pushing exactly the opposite lesson: that working together is better than working alone.
• There's a strange insistence by all the characters on using Attak Trak throughout the entire journey, even after Adam and Orko gain entrance to the cave. In fact, even the Gatekeeper, when carrying the heroes between dimensions, teleports the Trak with them. This is particularly unusual given the show's past habit of having the heroes ditch the Trak in various places (see for instance MU016).
• To enact their evil plan of infiltration, the villains magically disguise Kobra Khan as an Eternian citizen and arm him with a "sleep pellet." Um why, pray tell? Kobra Khan's most useful ability is to spray sleep gas out of his cobra's hood. Does the human disguise physically change his body, making his hood inaccessible? It seems unlikely, given that Lyn's glamour is unable to change Khan's sssibilant ssssspeech patternssssss. I suppose using a pellet is sneakier than shooting gas out of your neck; but in the event, Khan ends up trying to use his usual neck-gas instead of the pellet anyway.
• By the way, the fact that Khan gets into the royal throne room makes this yet another case of home invasion. This time, though, the villains' plan is comparatively realistic and stealthy. Having chosen the day when anyone who doesn't look obviously evil gets let in, and having used a magical disguise, the Evil Warriors have gone to a lot more trouble than usual to enter the palace. Let's not forget that Lyn and Skeletor have on separate occasions simply teleported in (see for instance MU017 or MU048).
• This latest from our friend Mr. Straczynski is an okay story, entertaining at least, but it feels rather like we're led off on a tangent by Orko's magical handicapping, and the retcons of Eternia Day and the Scepter of Power leave us with that familiar tremulous MOTU feeling, of the bedrock of lore shifting beneath our feet.